When Life by the Clock “falls back”

Posted on 04. Nov, 2007 by Jillian in Glycogen Storage Disease

Daylight savings time kicked in today and we were supposed to get an extra hour of sleep this morning. Ya, right. As if kids like to sleep in on any day other than a school day. We also woke up wondering what on earth to do about switching cornstarch schedules. Somehow it crept up on us and we couldn’t remember the “correct” way to do it.

For a few brief seconds Ben and I entertained the idea of just switching the times we starch the kids instead of switching the kids to the new time. After considering how much of our life we’ve scheduled around cornstarch, and cornstarch around our lives, we decided to change to the new time.

But how do you do it? When we change a couple time zones we simply give half strength doses and then a full strength dose in a couple of hours. This is only a one hour difference.  When we “Spring forward” we just give their doses 10 minutes early 6 times, and we’re in great shape. But giving cornstarch late is a very scary thing. They’ve already suffered so much damage from hypoglycemic episodes that I’m a little intense if they’re even a few minutes late. But, we decided if we monitored them closely enough, we should be OK, and that’s what we did.

We were originally going to do 10 minutes late each time, but with our crazy Sunday schedule we were concerned that a time would be too easily messed up. It would also have taken us into night-time cornstarch, and that absolutely increases the odds for mistakes. We decided to just do 4 times of 15 minutes late each, but we tested them after 15 minutes and continuously shoving food in their mouths, and their blood sugar was great. We ended up watching them closely, feeding them more than usual, and testing them again in another 15 minutes. Again, their blood sugar was great so we starched them 30 minutes late. We followed the same procedure the next time cornstarch was due. We monitored their blood glucose levels fairly closely, and they seemed to do just fine. I’m sure the extra snacks helped though. So, in two shots of crazy intensity, it was over. We are officially switched over. I’m sure there was a much better way to do it, I just don’t know what it was.